A man in tails under a spotlight in a black space reading extracts from a book for 50 minutes isn’t the most enticing prospect…..but the book is Samuel Beckett’s Watt and the man is Barry McGovern.
Watt was written during the second world war when Beckett was in the French resistance. Like all of his work, your brain works overtime trying to understand it, but I’m not sure understanding it is the point here. You bathe in the beauty of the language as the protagonist undertakes his journey. It plays with language itself – there are a lot of lists & riffs on the title. It’s often funny and always captivating.
McGovern has a deep rich voice that you could listen to for a lot longer than 50 minutes and a particularly expressive face which brings the character alive – this is Watt himself, live, here on stage, telling you his story.
I’m not normally one for monologues; I’ve never been convinced they belong in a theatre or on a screen. Books, yes. Audio, yes. Here, though, if you aren’t distracted by the need to analyse, interpret or even understand and allow it all to wash over you, you too may be hypnotised by mere words beautifully spoken
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 
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